Writing About Other Cultures--Talk Given at SinC Into Great Writing 2016 in New Orleans (long)

I'm just recently back from Bouchercon 2016 in New Orleans, and the day before B'con began, Sisters in Crime presented its SinC Into Great Writing workshop, as usual. This year as part of SinC's emphasis on diversity that began with their Report for Change, it was "Doing Diversity Right." Walter Mosley gave a masterful keynote speech, and was followed by four presentations by Frankie Bailey (dialogue), Cindy Brown (characters), Greg Herren (plot), and mine about setting or culture. After all of us finished, we made a panel for Q&A with Terri Bischoff, acquisitions editor for Midnight Ink, representing publishing.

I promised several people to post my entire talk when I made it back home, so here it is, along with the resource list I handed out at the conference.

Writing About Other Cultures

This piece of our workshop is called Writing about Setting, but in my view, setting implies environment, background, and culture. It's much more than simply a case of painting backdrops of landscape or buildings for each scene, more than picking out a few exotic and colorful places and fascinating ceremonies to make strange and beautiful set-pieces of spectacle. So we'll be looking at how you learn how to write about the whole thing—environment, background, and culture, most of which is covered by the term culture.

On the resource handout, you'll find the best book possible on writing the Other, as academics call anyone who's not of your own gender, class, race, religion, ethnicity, culture, or ability status. This book is small and inexpensive, and it was written for science fiction/fantasy writers, but almost everything in it is equally applicable to crime fiction. It contains hands-on exercises and all kinds of helpful goodies. It covers character and culture. I can't recommend it enough.

You'll also find two blogs written by children's literature librarians that hold writers' and publishers' feet to the fire on writing about other cultures—because it's so important to write about the Other in kid's lit, but even more important to do it right. Read them, holding your writer's indignation in suspension. They're pretty unrelenting on those who didn't do that important work, especially if those writers double down on their mistakes once they're pointed out. After reading a while, though, you'll see that they also praise those who do the hard work to get it right and those who got something wrong, were called on it, and agreed to correct it in the next printing/edition.

I included these two blogs, so you'll see what you're facing when you try to write other cultures. These are the extremes because of the perceived importance in developing self-esteem and shaping world-views of children's books, but you will face folks doing a similar kind of judging on adult books, just usually not as important or well-publicized (librarians all over the country pay attention to these kid-lit blogs).

I believe strongly that it's important for writers to honestly portray cultures other than the mainstream, and the next blog listed is one I wrote after the Charleston Mother Emanuel Church massacre, talking about how dishonest and lazy portrayals of Black people had played a role in reinforcing the bigotry that caused that shooting, how these bad portrayals happens to other peoples and cultures, as well, and how vital it is that they stop. Writers must learn to portray cultures other than the mainstream. An artist must paint a true portrait of the world, not whitewash it.

The internet is awash in blog posts and articles on how to write about other cultures. Some of them are excellent, some mediocre, and some downright wrong. (Hint: while empathy and imagination are vital, they alone will not help you write authentically about a culture you've not experienced.) I've combed through most of these (new ones pop up almost daily) and listed the best ones.

As you can see, I strongly encourage you to write the Other. But at the same time, I don't want you to be blindsided by criticism you weren't expecting and decide you'll never make that attempt again. I want you to go into the arena aware of the dangers and armed against them.

For there are dangers in writing about a culture that's not your own, and those dangers are especially fierce if you're a middle-class-or-above, white, heterosexual, able-bodied writer.

First of all, simply by writing about that Other, you may well be keeping a member of that culture from being able to publish their book set authentically in their own culture. It's not your fault, but publishing is a very white, often dumb business. A publisher who publishes your book about XYZ culture will then say to everyone else who submits, “We have our XYZ book already.” And other publishers will often say, “That publisher does XYZ books, so we can't.” The mindset of mainstream publishing is that the world needs an infinity of books about the world of middle-class or rich heterosexual able-bodied white people, but the number of books it can handle about people of color, of varying genders, of the “lower” classes, of varying physical and mental abilities is extremely limited. And because of this limited experience and worldview, a publisher is much more likely to buy a book by a white, able-bodied, middle-class, heterosexual writer about XYZ culture instead of a book by someone from XYZ culture—simply because they will share the same assumptions and perspectives, and it will feel less foreign and uncomfortable to the publisher.

Tony Hillerman is usually set up as an example of a good way to write about another culture—I've said so myself. Hillerman loved Navajo culture and people and had many Navajo friends—he really worked hard to get the culture right. But how many Navajo novels have been published by Navajo people since Hillerman's books? There are lots of fine Navajo writers, many of them friends of mine, but usually they only get published as poets or literary short fiction writers, because there are so many little literary magazines for those genres, and not many readers or any money or recognition. The niche for trade or commercial fiction about Navajo people has been filled by Hillerman, as far as publishing is concerned. I don't think he'd be happy about that, if he were still alive, but it's still the case. So the people who get angry about someone from the mainstream writing about their culture and keeping their own voices from being heard have a real point. There's your first danger: People may be angry with you, even if you get things right, because they see your book as preventing a person of that culture from writing and publishing—and they may not be entirely wrong.

Tony Hillerman is a good example of the second big danger, as well. As I said, he worked hard to get Navajo culture right. He had many Navajo friends and ran things past them and went to them for information and answers to questions he developed. Big hint—this is what you should do when writing about the Other—check it with someone you've developed a relationship with who belongs to that culture. Hillerman's problem was that most of his friends were fairly assimilated and didn't still follow the most traditional teachings, so they told him about religious things that were supposed to be kept secret, and Hillerman put them into his books, telling the world. In traditional Navajo religious beliefs that tampered dangerously with powerful essences and may have allowed them access to the world. Also, because his friends were no longer still highly traditional, their understanding of some of these more religious things was a little off. None of this was Hillerman's fault, and the Navajo Nation awarded him Friend of the Navajo Nation status, but a number of traditional Navajo were very unhappy with him and still are.

As a part of this second danger, one thing you must remember about doing research on other cultures in books, libraries, on the internet, is that much of it is wrong, accidentally or willfully. Accidentally, because journalists, anthropologists, other scholars, and explorers may have misinterpreted what they saw or heard or because—and this was common—their informants deliberately misinformed them to protect their people or to protect their own source of whatever the white man was providing them. Consequently, even primary sources from past times can be contaminated if they are “as told to” or are translated. Willfully, because a lot of that research was done by people, usually white men, who had an agenda that placed wealthy white male Europeans at the pinnacle of creation and everyone and everything else downhill from that, which led to eugenics and a lot of other horrid, stupid things. So there's your second caveat: You can do your research and still get it wrong in some way.

Still, as I pointed out, Hillerman was named Friend of the Navajo Nation by the culture about which he wrote, and even though there are some naysayers, he's counted successful at his attempts to portray Navajo characters and culture in some depth. If you can manage that, you'll have done very well, indeed.

How do we go about the process then? The beginning is always research—keeping in mind the caveats above about mistakes and agendas in the work of scholars. You can learn some basic history, etc., from these, but remember they're written from another culture's viewpoint and therefore are tales with unreliable narrators.

Look in particular for any primary sources you can find, work written by members of the culture as memoir, other nonfiction, or even fiction or poetry. There are magazines, often online, that focus on the writing of women, LGBTQIA people, Latinos, Natives, Asian Americans, African Americans, Muslims, working-class and poor people, and people with disabilities. In these, you'll not only find primary literary work you can read and learn from, but you'll often find references to books written by people of this Other culture.

Next, you must find and meet people of this Other culture. Do that basic research first, though, so you have some foundation. Nothing is more insulting to anyone than to say, essentially, “I know nothing about you and your culture, and I couldn't be bothered to do even the most minimal research on it, so please do it all for me and make me an expert overnight.”

If you already know some people from this community, now is the time to follow up on those relationships and deepen them. If you're someone who lives in a segregated community—and this is the case for most people now, congregating in suburbs and neighborhoods that are filled with people just like themselves—and you don't have any friends or acquaintances from work or an earlier time in your life who belong to this Other culture, this is the trickiest part—you will have to make friends. And people from marginalized communities can be quite wary of strangers who come in to their areas wanting to exploit them for some reason and then drop them. They've usually been there before. If you don't have any acquaintances in that community, ask among your friends and their friends and see if someone you do know has any. If they do, they can arrange an introduction for you. This can be extremely helpful.

Take your informant to lunch or dinner. Treat this person with respect. When researching another culture or anything—say, life as a policeman or the way City Hall works behind the scenes—please remember that common courtesy and respect are your best friends. If you've been recommended by a friend of theirs and you treat them well, they should relax in your presence. It's like making friends with anyone else new. You want to spend plenty of time getting to know each other with a huge emphasis on real listening on your part. (All the while you're listening, you're learning.) If you can show that you're really interested in them and what they have to say, that you're receptive and truly paying attention to them and truly listening, they will be much more likely to help you. Tell them what you're trying to write and that you want to give an honest portrayal, and ask if they'd be willing to answer some questions for you. You can take a list of specific questions with you, but you may well want to reserve your first meeting for getting to know and trust each other and set a second meeting to go over the questions.

It's a matter of building a relationship. If that's simply not something you can see yourself doing—many writers are extreme introverts—it's also possible to find paid “diversity readers” online, who will read your work to point out flawed areas and problem portrayals. Some of them are excellent writers from those communities, and their help is worth the money paid. Some of them are self-styled diversity experts who may not actually be of the cultures they purport to know. As with anything on the internet, you must do your own research on people before hiring them to make sure they're actually what they present themselves to be. Ask for references.

Once you've finished your first draft, you will want to have a reading by someone from the culture you're trying to bring alive on the page. And if that someone points out a problem with representation that needs to be fixed, don't argue with them. Go fix it. Even if it's a lot of extra work.

In the front or back matter of your book (wherever you put your acknowledgments page), acknowledge the help you received from the people you consulted on the cultural environment, and see to it that they each get a free book.

And remember, you can do it all right and still have someone upset that you published the book because there will be less room for a writer from that community now—and they won't be wrong. Do whatever you can to help writers from that culture to reach success—signal boost, give blurbs, mentor, recommend, whatever you can do. And continue to do this. Your book may be out there in the marketplace for a long time. Make sure you're helping people from that community be heard for at least as long. Aside from being the right thing to do, it's good karma.

Above all, know that what you're doing in trying to diversify your writing is absolutely important. Many of the problems we have with racism, sexism, homophobia, able-ism, classism, and all kinds of xenophobia stem from the damaging stereotypes that are continually presented about other cultures and the people living in them. You are changing the world for the better when you change that.

Resources For Writing About Other Cultures

Best book around about it—Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0065MZ26O/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Blogs/online articles

http://readingwhilewhite.blogspot.com/ – a blog about good and bad representation in children's books

https://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/ – a blog about good and bad representation in children's books

http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2015/06/how-did-writers-directors-and-media.html – a blog post I wrote about the need for accurate representation by writers, etc., and what terrible effects the lack of it produces

http://gaudior.livejournal.com/303308.html

https://www.buzzfeed.com/danieljoseolder/fundamentals-of-writing-the-other?utm_term=.xb0qQXvko#.udV8QAO6g

http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10087

http://matociquala.livejournal.com/1544111.html

http://www.malindalo.com/2014/04/should-white-people-write-about-people-of-color/

http://www.rukhsanakhan.com/articles/voiceappropriation.html

Why Taking Issue with Racist, Homophobic, Ableist Stereotypes Does Not Equal Being a Member of ISIS and Other Home Truths

Once again, this will be a long post as I try to unpack the problems with a rambling article in the Huffington Post today that responds to the issues that began on HuffPo in an article by Kate Gale several weeks ago. This current article by Carol Muske-Dukes veers from Kate Gale’s original HuffPo article to terrorism (with accusations comparing those opposed to Gale’s article to ISIS) to an article in The Atlantic to free speech and the First Amendment to standup comedians to AWP to Muske-Dukes’s youthful engagement with teaching in the prison system to Stalin to “triggering” warnings to Dorothy Parker to the University of New Hampshire to “enduring” values and rights to censorship and alleged death threats to Straight Outta Compton to the Kurdish women fighters to Mandelstam and on and on. Oh, and of course, “political correctness,” that tired, old canard from the Newt Gingrich/Jesse Helms-era culture wars against writers and intellectuals that has so steadfastly refused to die.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-muskedukes/gale-force_b_8101576.html

First, let’s back up and revisit the original article by Kate Gale for those of you who didn’t see it or have blessedly forgotten it. I wrote a blog post about it and included screen shots of her article, which is important because the article has been deleted and replaced with an abortive apology, which was later supplemented with a fuller, still non-apologetic apology.  I have given a detailed timeline with links of what led up to this article, “AWP Is Us,” and what led from it (at least up to the time I posted this blog). I’ve also posted the screenshots of “AWP Is Us” on this blog  for your convenience.

http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-series-of-unfortunate-eventsawp-david.html

As you may note, in that blog post there is no threat of violence toward Gale. If you go to the link for what was the original article and then became the first “apology,” you can still read the many, many comments.  I haven’t read all of them but have read the first hundred or so. There’s no threat of violence toward Gale. Most of the comments are well-reasoned and articulate commentary on a troublesome piece of writing. If you follow the other links to other blog posts and articles about the controversy, you will find no threats of violence. I’ve read many more blogs and essays about this than are linked in my blog, and all of them have been well-reasoned and articulate without any threat of violence. There may well have been some threat of violence somewhere, but although I’ve read a huge number of internet article comments, blog posts, articles, essays, Facebook posts, and tweets concerning the Gale article, I have seen not one threat of physical violence, not even in the heated discussions of it that have taken place in private Facebook groups for writers of color. I urge my readers to google “AWP Is Us” and “Kate Gale AWP” and read all the various commentary for themselves. Violent threats are obviously not the common tenor of the opposition to Gale’s column, although Muske-Dukes would try to make it seem so.

Unfortunately, Muske-Dukes seems to have particularly conflated Gale’s article, stand-up comedians, and the First Amendment in a most bizarre way. First of all, freedom of speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is the constitutional right of a publisher to publish even controversial work without official interference from the government. It does not guarantee that readers will not take issue with the published work. It does not even guarantee the right of an author to be published if a press does not choose to publish her/him. It is narrowly focused around banning official government-supported censorship of publishers and has been expanded to cover the government’s inability to officially stop most kinds of oral speech, even if offensive. No government official made any attempt to prevent the Huffington Post from publishing Gale’s article. Gale is not a stand-up comedian in front of a live audience, so the many odd references to various stand-up comedians and the suggestion that comedy is dead because of the opposition to Gale’s piece make no sense, at all. As a matter of fact, Gale herself, in her later apology, has called her article a failed attempt at humor.

Perhaps one of the most irksome parts of Muske-Dukes’s article is her assumption that Gale’s critics are not activists and are not doing anything for the community.

“But I'm inclined to ask the ‘virtual vigilantes’ if they have ever started a press or a membership organization, if they've gone into the prisons to teach -- or if they've tried to do stand-up? Instead of weeping, why not figure out how to be strong?”

I know many of the people who have articulately opposed Gale’s stereotypes with comments, blog posts, essays, etc. We have started and run presses and membership organizations and reading series. We have gone into prisons and jails and juvenile detention centers to teach—and inner-city schools and domestic-violence shelters and homeless shelters and among migrant workers and on reservations and elsewhere. I have myself done all of those. Most of us still are doing such things. The assumption that only white privileged academics do anything for the community is both false and foolish.

Another assumption she also makes is that no one who opposed Gale’s article opposed the erasing of women and the misogyny of the movie, Outta Compton. Once again, Muske-Dukes is drastically incorrect, apparently not having bothered to research her accusation before making it. The Washington Post had an article by Jamilah Lemieux discussing the fact that all the critical praise for the movie was coming from white male critics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/21/white-critics-and-rap-fans-love-straight-outta-compton-but-theyre-missing-half-the-story/

Kim Trent wrote about it in the Detroit Free Press. http://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/08/21/nwa-women/32163613/

Alex Abad-Santos wrote about it in Vox: http://www.vox.com/2015/8/25/9205595/compton-movie-misogyny

And there’s much more that can be easily googled.

Now, we come to the really foolish hyperbole. Some of it lies in the above quote from the article—“virtual vigilantes.” But it gets much worse.

“What, I asked myself, had Kate Gale done to piss off Isis?

Here's how she pissed off (if not Isis itself) those unwittingly willing to take ideological instruction (in the cause of self-righteousness) from the M.O. of extremism. “

“I'm talking about women who actually fight and kill members of Isis! Though they live in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan -- an area beset by tragedy and oppression -- these women use Isis' misogyny against them. They are the Kurdish women fighters who fashion a military strategy on the belief of these Muslim extremists that if they are killed by a woman they cannot go to heaven (so forget the 72 virgins!) -- so if they see a female fighter coming at them, they run like hell. This is a desperate situation but it is also funny -- unless perhaps you're too P.C. to laugh. Instead of weeping, why not recruit yourself to go over there and join forces with women who really know the meaning of the comedy term, ‘to kill’?”

So, if we have issues with Gale’s use of racist stereotypes for “humor,” we are terrorists, members of ISIS, “willing to take ideological instruction… from the M.O. of extremism”? I would like to note that, to my knowledge, no one tried to even imply that Kate Gale was a terrorist, a member of ISIS, or taking ideological instruction from terrorists. But that is the accusation Muske-Dukes levies against anyone who has problems with Gale using the genocide of our ancestors as a joke to hold us up for ridicule. As Kimberly Gail Wieser comments on Muske-Dukes’s article, “. . . and there's just a little historical irony in making jokes about the American Holocaust and then calling us terrorists if we defend ourselves when other people were the ones utilizing violent language. Just saying.”

Also, to suggest that we must somehow prove our genuineness, non-terrorist-ness, and non-PC-ness by volunteering to go over to the Middle East and join up with the Kurd women warriors who are fighting against Turkey and ISIS is so bogus that it’s truly laughable. It’s as if Muske-Dukes believes that only those with white privilege are allowed to criticize anything in this society without making some extraordinary effort to “deserve” that right. How dare we people of color, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities even open our mouths, right? Well, we dare. And we shall go right on speaking out when we see people employing racist, homophobic, ableist stereotypes.

The sad thing is that many people within AWP’s diversity communities were so disgusted with the whole situation before that they wanted to withdraw from AWP. There have been calls that we should break away and form our own organization or go to another organization that’s more welcoming of diversity. Along with many others, I’ve been trying to persuade people not to run away but to stay and work with AWP to make things better. We’ve pulled together all the diversity caucuses to try to work things out and keep people from bolting in large numbers. A piece like Muske-Dukes’s undoes a lot of that work and causes us to start all over again.

How often must we go through this? If this keeps up, soon enough, even those of us who keep saying, “Not all of the white lit hierarchy thinks that way—we need to stay and work things out,” will have to agree that “yes, they just want us to shut up and take whatever they dish out.”
 

“A Series of Unfortunate Events”—AWP, David Fenza, and Kate Gale’s “AWP Is Us”

LATEST NEWS: AWP director Fenza defends Kate Gale's piece.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/trade-shows-events/article/67908-red-hen-press-kate-gale-apologizes-for-commentary-awp-defends-her.html

This is a long post because I’m trying to give a timeline of events in a situation that bodes ill for #diverselit writers and some background for my readers who are not familiar with the situation or even with the organization and players. This series of events begins with the announcement of panel acceptances for The Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), the nation’s largest national organization for writers and academic programs that teach writing. There is always fierce competition for representation on such panels—by individuals because travel funding from their institution to even attend AWP (which is an expensive, huge conference) often depends on them being named to a panel and by AWP’s various communities because, as with so many large national organizations, the default tends to white male. This last, I want to point out is something that AWP has been working on in recent years. They still have a long way to go, but they have made real progress from the early days when AWP was primarily white and male. The panel representation has diversified remarkably from those days, although it is still problematic, and the establishment of caucuses for marginalized communities within AWP has been a major step forward.

After a disastrous earlier mix-up which inadvertently made some unofficial decisions public and caused dissatisfied speculation and murmurings even before the official list came out, the list of official panel acceptances was announced on Twitter. An AWP member named Laura Mullen tweeted in reply (from her personal account), asking if they would furnish demographics on the panel selections. AWP director David Fenza then sent her an email chiding her for “casting aspersions” on AWP and copied both her department chair and associate chair.  For someone on tenure track or non-tenured or adjunct, as many AWP members in the marginalized communities are, this would have been an effective silencing tactic, threatening their employment. In Mullen’s case, she is an endowed professor and tenured, as well as director of LSU’s writing program, so she was not silenced. She wrote about it on her blog and posted Fenza’s letter, and the whole situation blew up on social media.

http://afteriwasdead.blogspot.com/?view=classic

Soon, a petition was posted at Change.org, focused on the lack of disability panels and asking for increased transparency and for Fenza to apologize to Mullen and for the AWP Board to officially underscore that intimidation tactics by Board or staff of AWP against members would not be tolerated.

https://www.change.org/p/awp-board-of-trustees-david-fenza-awp-executive-director-call-for-increased-diversity-accessibility-and-transparency-from-awp?recruiter=1248188&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=des-md-share_petition-no_msg&fb_ref=Default#petition-letter

At that time, AWP should have risen to the occasion. Fenza should have publicly apologized. The Board should have issued a statement disavowing such intimidation tactics and stating they would not be tolerated. AWP should have agreed to more transparency and entered discussions as to how this could be accomplished. If this had happened, AWP would have been seen as a responsive and responsible organization. But, of course, it didn’t. The Board members are located all over the U.S., the leader of the staff was the person (Fenza) with the most to lose, and institutions in general move slowly in making decisions and dealing with crises. But finally AWP began to release some stats on panel selection and talk about the possibility of more transparency in the future—without, unfortunately, addressing the issues raised around disability or Fenza’s letter.

Next in this unfortunate sequence of events, we come to founder and CEO of Red Hen Press, member of the AWP 2016 conference committee, juror for panel selection for AWP 2016, Kate Gale, and her Huffington Post piece, “AWP Is Us.” (She has been scrubbing all evidence of this from the internet, so I have included screenshots of her actual original article as graphics on this post.) Also, here’s a link to a PDF of the original article.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hvrwq6ofzdrgkvx/AWP%20Is%20Us%C2%A0|%C2%A0Kate%20Gale.pdf?dl=0

There is so much wrong with this article that it’s hard to know where to start, the offensive, insulting stereotypes of so many groups—could she have packed more stereotypes into one short piece?—the chiding tone, the “you people” right up front in her first paragraph. I’m going to focus on the second and third paragraphs for purely personal reasons—because she used those paragraphs to insult and offend me and mine and because I believe she used me and mine as a stalking horse since she didn’t have the nerve to write a piece ridiculing and insulting people with disabilities (who were the originators of the petition). A lot of folks are fine with ignoring people with disabilities and treating them as invisible, but then worry about being seen as cruel if they publicly make fun of people with wheelchairs, canes, braces, and walkers. (I say this with more than a hint of personal bitterness, since I’m one of those people on canes.)

But Indians, hey, everyone makes fun of Indians. It’s a national pastime. In Washington, D.C., people make themselves up as caricatures of Indians to go to ballgames in big groups and ridicule us. At music festivals, hip young things don our sacred regalia or perversions of it to dance around half-naked.  America’s been insulting us and underestimating us for centuries.

“One of the complaints lobbed at AWP is for not enough inclusion of different groups, another is for more transparency. This summer I was at a dinner and someone leaned across to me and confided, ‘AWP hates Native Americans.’

‘Really now?’ I said, ‘I'm going to be in Washington this summer and I'd love to discuss this with them.’ I took out a pen and paper. ‘Who hates Indians at the office there? Is it Fenza?’ I pictured David Fenza saddling up a horse, Stetson in place, going out to shoot Indians. It was an unlikely image. The woman began fumbling around; she couldn't tell me who the Indian hater was.”

 

Yes, let’s look at that image of David Fenza shooting Indians. How nineteenth century for such a twenty-first century woman? Perhaps she doesn’t know any of us survived the Removals and Indian Wars? No, that can’t be. She has prominent Native writers on her board and has published Native writers (none of whom I will name here because I know they must be cringing over this debacle already). So, it’s not ignorance. It must be a deliberate attempt to bring in a reminder of the genocidal Indian Wars, a reminder to us that we should be careful and not challenge powerful white people. I don’t think David Fenza hates Indians, but her own words make me think Kate Gale does.

I don’t believe for a second that this conversation took place, or if it did, it was not in those words. I know a large number of the Native writers who attend AWP, and I know of not one who would say, “AWP hates Native Americans.” Frankly, I know a hell of a lot of writers from many marginalized communities at AWP, some of whom have been quite angry with AWP for a while, but no one I know would say the organization hates Latinos/African Americans/LGTBQ people/whatever. I suspect this is more what a privileged white person thinks a person from a marginalized community would say. It’s basically Tea Party rhetoric in an environment where that kind of discourse is the last thing I would expect.

Indigenous writers at AWP have been working with the Board and the staff to increase Indigenous representation and participation, and while AWP is slow in implementing desired changes (as one learns to expect from big organizations), the staff and Board have been basically supportive. We keep pushing, and they slowly respond with greater representation and participation. We wish they were faster to change, and they wish we would stop asking for more, but our conversations and relationship have never been marked with hostility on either side. As I said earlier, I suspect Gale didn’t want to say something as openly and pointedly ridiculing and offensive about people with disabilities, so she chose our community as a safe and acceptable stalking horse. This was a mistake, of course, but then the whole piece was a massive mistake, insulting people of color, LGBTQ folks—and people with disabilities were not fooled, anyway.

Immediately, the comments section at Huffington Post began accreting negative comments, some of it quite thoughtful and excellent feedback for Gale if she bothered to read it. A stream of even more hostile comments began on Twitter. Facebook, especially in groups dedicated to traditionally marginalized writers, developed long, multi-faceted conversations around “AWP Is Us.” Thoughtful blog posts sprang up, and Higher Education Inside and Publishers Weekly published articles about it.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/08/26/article-defending-writing-program-association-infuriates-many-its-members#.Vd33OWvpsPg.twitter

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/trade-shows-events/article/67901-charges-of-discrimination-lack-of-diversity-leveled-against-awp.html

With all the negative feedback swarming around, AWP finally made a limited comment. In a tweet from the official AWP Twitter feed, they said: “AWP board and staff were unaware of Kate Gale’s Huffington Post article until it was posted. AWP did not and does not endorse the article.” Many people felt this was too little, too late, especially as the chair of the AWP 2016 conference committee, a Board member, initially “LIKED” this article when first posted, only to remove that later when all the negative publicity arose.

Then Gale took down her article on Huffington Post and posted the following non-apology.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kate-gale/awp-is-us_b_8029224.html

Other than the first sentence—“I apologize for this post and the hurt it caused.”—the rest of the post is basically the Red Hen Press mission statement and an ad for the press. Apparently, she had become aware of the way her article was adversely affecting Red Hen Press. There had been suggestions that it be boycotted. Along with others, I cautioned that such a boycott would harm the writers of RHP, who were probably in pain already from the piece their publisher had posted in such a huge public forum.  I do have great sympathy for RHP’s authors and its board members, who were almost certainly not consulted before this blog was posted and who must have felt it as a great betrayal from someone whom they trusted.

As this post is going up, the most recent media coverage is an article in the Los Angeles Times, which also criticizes her portrayal of Los Angeles as not welcoming to literary culture.

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-diversity-at-awp-20150826-htmlstory.html

Gale is reaping the whirlwind that she sowed, and my final word on her aspect of this huge fiasco is a suggestion that people look up her resume. She is woven through the warp and weft of national literary culture, sitting on the boards or in leadership positions of many of our largest and most influential organizations that give awards and grants and publication. Ask yourself how little confidence writers of color, writers with disabilities, LGBTQ writers, and other marginalized communities can have that their work or the work of the best people in their communities will have a real chance at any of these awards, grants, panels, or other opportunities when someone who thinks this way is in power. Ask yourself how this is fair or just.

To me, however, the most important part of this disaster is the organization, AWP. This organization is a vital one for writers, academic programs, and literary culture in this country. It has made some real progress, after initially being dragged with a little screaming into the diversity of the twenty-first century. I hate to see its forward momentum blocked. I think establishment folks don’t actually realize that many writers in marginalized communities, who are fighting for every tiny scrap of representation in the larger community they can get, fear that those people in charge of all these large organizations feel the way Gale writes about their communities. I think it’s a subtler thing than that, a more institutional and unconscious bias in favor of the familiar, but those in leadership positions at AWP need to understand that many will read Gale’s piece and say, “Wow! What I was always afraid of is true!” It is imperative that AWP make absolutely clear, not just that they disavow any hint of approval for this piece, but that they will take concrete steps immediately to move toward greater transparency and make a strong formal statement that tactics of intimidation by AWP Board or staff toward members are unacceptable and will face serious consequences. And I think AWP must ask itself honestly whether it can continue to enjoy any confidence from its membership if David Fenza remains as its leader without formal reprimand to Fenza or apology to Mullen.

I have been so pleased to see the transformation over the years of AWP into a much more diverse organization and conference. I have so enjoyed seeing my fellow writers from marginalized communities begin to show up in greater and greater numbers every year. I would hate to see a reversal of all the very real good work that hard-working people on that board and on that staff have put in through the years to make this happen. I hope AWP will meet the challenge it is currently facing and, for once, do the right thing fully when it needs to be done and not much, much too little too late.